


Like A Night In A Southern Summer

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Assault (Sadie Hawkins), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine and Sam meet on tumblr, and then they meet in person. It's everything Blaine hopes it could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Night In A Southern Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Title magpied from 'State Lines' by The Shires. :)

Blaine has tried on three different t-shirts, with suspenders and without, has changed his tie six times and then tried without, has gelled his hair twice because his nervous shaking hands had got it all wrong the first time, irrespective of the number of years he has been doing it for, and now he’s standing in his hallway, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His mom leans against the door frame behind him, smiles at his reflection. “You’re going to be late,” she says, and he huffs a frustrated sigh at her, pulls at the collar of his polo shirt, undoes his bow tie again.

“I know,” he says, and then, “This is too much.”

He takes the bow tie off again, and goes back upstairs to change into a comfortable sweater instead, maybe something with a boat neck… He bangs his forehead against his bedroom wall for the third time and laughs at himself. There is, he tells himself for the millionth time since he and Sam had arranged this meeting two months ago, absolutely nothing to be this worried about. He knows Sam. It’s going to be fine. They’re friends, right? He stands in front of his standing floor length mirror and cocks his head, appraises the jeans with his sweater, changes them for more neutral cream high waters, and shoves his feet into boat shoes.

Bouncing his car keys in his hand, he is out of the door before he can overthink his ensemble again, his mom’s “Good luck, sweetie,” jangling along with his nerves until he thinks he may be physically vibrating. He’s meeting Sam, and he scared.

*

It begins a little over a year prior to that.

Sam - then just a username on a screen and a notification in his email inbox - had followed his blog. Blaine had been surprised and a little sceptical when he’d checked the username out. Blaine blogged about show choir with the occasional segue into comics, and fashion if something caught his eye. If he was completely truthful, he fashion blogging was less about fashion and more about the cute Fred Perry or Burberry boys wearing the clothes, but he’d reblog a smart suit or well cut jacket irrespective of who was in it. Blaine’s aesthetic priority for fashion is clean lines and a sharp silhouette, not the label in the back of it or the gender wearing it. (Or he’s a little defensive of the clearly androgynous girls sweaters in his closet. Either way.) Sam’s blog had been a lot of comics, some fitness, and the occasional show choir reblog here and there, some of it tagged, but not enough of it to build for himself a clear picture of who the blogger was. Blaine had still found himself on page six before he really realise he was even scrolling. He’d hesitated for three days, and then clicked on the ‘follow’ button Sam’s blog as well. Then he exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and let his dashboard do it’s thing with one extra person on it. Nothing much changed, just a little extra football and a lot of extra Marvel.

Blaine didn’t get a lot of messages in his inbox. He spoke with a few people online - friends from school, a few fellow show choir enthusiasts, but no one he would have said he was close with anymore. When messages did appear in his inbox, he’d veer between quietly dubious and excited by it. When the number shifted from 0 to 1 on a slow Sunday evening, he was having a day where he felt mostly dubious of it. He made himself a sandwich, chatted idly with his mom for a few minutes, and then wandered back upstairs and opened the message. He was actually mildly surprised to discover it was the new blogger, because he still wasn’t sure where the follow came from or why.

Reading the message was laborious. The spelling was terrible, and there had been a lot of letter for word substitutions. But through all of that, Sam - who introduced himself and apologised upfront for his spelling, said he had dyslexia but it was okay and better than it was since he’d been diagnosed - told him that he was one of the reasons he actually got a blog in the first place. He said he liked how passionate Blaine was when he spoke. Or like, typed. Whatever. By the time Blaine finished reading, his smile was wide and his sandwich forgotten. He replied.

That’s how it began.

Throughout the summer, they had grown closer, exchanged email addresses and real names, ages. Sam was the same age as him, give or take a few months. Sam’s family were from Kentucky, but had moved to Ohio his sophomore year. Blaine said that must have been hard - he’d moved schools that year as well. Sam had asked why, and Blaine had vanished from the internet for a day, only to come back to a message on his blog saying that Sam was sorry, he didn’t have to say. Blaine clicked reply and typed slowly, trying to make the words sound right, to come in the right order. There was a lot to share, and it needed to make sense. In the end, when the message felt like a mini-essay, he clicked send and logged off again.

In the morning, there was an email in Blaine’s inbox. Sam started by saying it seemed more reliable, and easier to hold a conversation because no one has to worry about character limits.

And then he said he was sorry that those things had happened to Blaine. “There’s a gay kid in my glee club,” he typed. “I know he has it pretty hard. I wish I knew how to help.”

Blaine smiled and clicked reply. “Just be his friend,” he advised. “Knowing you’re not threatened by our existence is a start.”

Not for the first time, he wished he knew Sam outside of the internet as well.

Before school started again in the fall, Sam suggested they exchange numbers. Once he had football and Glee and homework to try to work through, he’d have less time to hang out online. It would be awful if they couldn’t still talk in some way or another. Blaine suggested Kik as well, and that was that. He offered to help Sam out with his school work where he could, and said he was only ever a message away. It’d be cool to still be able to hang out, even if neither of them were reliably around on the same evenings anymore. After that, he started to look forward to Sam’s sometimes idiosyncratic jumbled text messages. If he’d had to put a name to the feeling he had growing inside of him, he’d have said he was a little bit in love with him, and he thougt - hoped, at least - that Sam wouldn’t mind, despite having identified himself as straight pretty early in their conversations after Blaine had told him about being pretty knocked around after a Sadie Hawkins dance after he came out. Sam had been nothing but kind, albeit clueless sometimes in his enthusiasms. Blaine liked him for the size of his heart, and his willingness to learn, and hadn’t considered for a moment that he had no idea what Sam even looked like, or if Sam knew what colour his eyes were. It didn’t matter, and that was freeing.

At Christmas, Sam asked if his parents would mind him sharing his address. He’d asked his mom, and she’d asked why, and whether he was being careful. “I don’t want you to be taken advantage of, sweetheart,” she said, very rationally, over dinner. Blaine pushed his food around his plate and thought about whether Sam seemed liked the kind of person with enough guile to have lead him on for months. He didn’t think so.

“I think he just wants to send a card,” he says eventually. His mom nodded her head, rested her elbows on the table, and smiled.

“Just don’t take unnecessary risks, okay?”

“Okay.”

Once they were done eating, he sent Sam a message with his postal address, and Sam had replied with a thank you. He sent a card with his address written in it as well. Blaine sat and stared at the address for almost half an hour, and then sent Sam a text message.

 **Blaine (12.02pm):** You’re less than an hour away?

 **Sam (12.05pm):** Apparently!

Blaine had laughed, bright and honest and full of joy.

In February, still not sure of what one another looked like, really, beyond random shots of the football team that Sam posted sometimes and a picture Blaine’s mom had taken of him performing at King’s Island over the holidays which he had posted with his write up of the experience, Sam suggested maybe they could get together sometime. No pressure. Just catch a movie, have dinner, something to mark a year of knowing one another. Blaine felt his heart swoop and his stomach tie itself in knots, and he’s once again vanished into silence and thought. When he finally replied, sixteen hours later, it was an affirmative, backed by his mom, on the proviso they keep it public.

“I’m not an axe murderer,” Sam quipped.

“I’m sure that’s exactly what an axe murderer would say!” Blaine replied. And then, “I know you’re not. But better safe, right? You don’t know me either.”

The only weekend they had simultaneously free turned out to be two months in the future, which would push them just past a year of knowing one another. Blaine would drive the town over and meet Sam in Lima, if Sam gave him directions of where would be good to meet. Sam suggested Breadstix. “All the kids here hang out there,” he said. “They’re like, legally obliged to keep bringing your breadsticks. It’s cheap but the food’s okay?”

Blaine agreed. That was that. They were set.

*

Except that now the day is here. He’s meeting Sam for the very first time, knows only that Sam is blond and athletic, and that he’ll be at the restaurant. As he pulls into the lot, he sends Sam a picture of his face, finally, so that Sam can identify him. He’s pretty sure that fact he’s so nervous he can barely walk and wants, mostly, to get back in his car and drive home might give him away first. He scans the parked cars and the milling bodies quickly, breathes out slowly, and tries to calm the racing of his heart. He can do this. He has performed to hostile crowds in theme parks, this should be easy.

Except he actually cares whether or not Sam likes him in a way he doesn’t with the theme park performances, which are mainly for his college application. He wants to make a good impression, wants to be utterly non-threatening and wonders how obvious it has been over the past few months with the size of his crush on the idea of Sam…

He stops his internal monologue when a boy waves at him from across the parking lot, jogs towards him. “Blaine?” he says, and he’s tall and slim, muscled and handsome, his hair falling in his eyes and clearly lightened slightly. His eyes are shining and his mouth is stretched wide in a smile, and Blaine feels himself smiling back as he nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yes. Sam?”

Sam nods and holds his hand out, and Blaine takes it, shakes it, only to be pulled into a tight hug that catches him unprepared. He winds his arms around the solid shape of Sam and hugs him back, and the physical contact feels good. He hasn’t realised how much he’s missed it until it’s given without hesitation.

“Not an axe murderer,” he says as Sam pulls away, and Sam laughs, warm and unfiltered.

And Blaine thinks, he likes Sam already.


End file.
